The Harvard Club of Washington DC and the Embassy
of Sri Lanka hosted a Tsunami Holiday Benefit on November 28,
2007 to support scholarships and micro-loans provided by Dr. Patrick
Mendis.

Ambassador Bernard Goonetilleke welcomed the
gathering of Harvard alumni and spoke about the diplomatic history
of Sri Lanka that dates back to Augustus Caesar of the Roman Empire.
He elaborated the continued foreign relations with other countries
before the colonial powers landed on the island. The ambassador
reminded the Harvard Club members that Sri Lanka received universal
adult suffrage in 1931, seventeen years after the United States.
Since then, Sri Lanka has been a practicing parliamentary democracy,
he said.

In his speech, Ambassador Goonetilleke highlighted
the engineering marvels of the centuries-old hydraulic civilization
in Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa, which still provide irrigated
water to thousands of farmers. Dr. Mendis, who was born and raised
on an irrigated rice field in Polonnaruwa, told his fellow alumni
that he “enjoyed the formative years working with water-buffaloes”
and remembered the days when he went to school “bare-foot.”

The ambassador said that he also grew up in a
rural background. He added that most Sri Lankans benefited greatly
through free education – from the kindergarten to the university
level - which has given opportunities for the best and the brightest
to excel.

Michael Gaw, president of the Harvard Club, thanked
the ambassador and his embassy staff for organizing the event
and introducing them to the “beautiful island” of
Sri Lanka. Several members of the audience said they have visited
and worked in Sri Lanka and still have fond memories of its hospitable
people and spicy food. President Gaw expressed his gratitude to
Dr. Mendis for giving a copy of his book, “Glocalization:
The Human Side of Globalization as If the Washington Consensus
Mattered,” to over fifty Harvard alumni who attended
the holiday benefit. The British-born Sri Lankan science-fiction
writer Sir Arthur C. Clarke has written the Foreword (click here
- www.patrickmendis.com)
to his book, from which proceeds of the sales Dr. Mendis has established
tsunami scholarships, a peace prize, and a micro-loans program
in Sri Lanka.

Dr. Mendis is a Sri Lankan-born American citizen
who served in the U.S. State Department as a foreign affairs officer
in the Bureau of Oceans, International Environmental, and Scientific
Affairs (OES) and the secretariat director of the Bureau of Educational
and Cultural Affairs (ECA) under U.S. Secretaries of State Madeleine
Albright and Colin Powell. He is an alumnus of the John F. Kennedy
School of Government and serving as an advisor at Harvard University.